William & Kate: A Modern Day Fairy Tale
Get ready for the royal romance to be dumbed down by the Americans into a biopic that feels like nothing more than an episode of Gossip Girl.
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under Programming, Reviews
It’s just as well the Royal Wedding is taking place during non-ratings.
Otherwise we would never be subjected to rubbish like this telemovie, that dramatises the romance of Prince William and Kate Middleton.
It’s one of a swathe of TV offerings on the couple this week in movies, specials, documentaries and of course the live wedding itself.
This telemovie produced by US channel Lifetime was named William & Kate, but TEN has added the “Modern Day Fairy Tale” tag, which to be frank sums up the tone of the piece pretty aptly.
It’s a vacuous work of fiction, based loosely on documented events and it dumbs the lives of two people down to the level of a Gossip Girl episode. And it isn’t even that good.
If it were any worse it would make a great drinking game, but as it stands it just borders on insulting.
William is played by NZ actor Nico Evers-Swindell (NCIS: Los Angeles, Law and Order), while Kate Middleton is played by British actress Camilla Luddington (CSI, Behaving Badly, Days of our Lives).
The cast also includes Australian actor Jonathan Patrick Moore plus Victoria Tennant, Ben Cross and Serena Scott Thomas.
Most of the telemovie is filmed in Los Angeles in stately buildings that pass themselves off as European architecture. Keep your eyes out for several double decker buses, London cabs and right-hand drive vehicles.
The story revolves around William’s years at university when he met Kate as a friend but didn’t become attracted to her until he saw her wearing very little in a fashion parade. There are scenes that show how he kept their subsequent romance secret, befriended her family, grew apart and then realised the error his ways. These key plot moves mirror those that are on the record.
But it is the detail of the scenes, the dialogue and the characterisations that are most banal here. Fictionalised scenes of what the two said in private are soapy, at best. Accents across the telemovie waver terribly, from acceptable, to plum-in-mouth to bad Americans trying to sound British.
Africa, where William spent time visiting needy children, is depicted fleetingly as a lake, a tent and some African (or African-American?) children getting a needle immunisation. Kenya, where he proposed to Kate, is a studio shot filmed before a fake sunset backdrop.
There’s even a bitchy young aristocrat who looks down her nose at Kate, like the perfect super-soap villain. With all the faux-continental trappings, you could swear you were watching a scene from Cruel Intentions or last week’s episode of Gossip Girl.
At one point William says to Kate, “Half of Britain loves my family but the other half thinks we’re an outdated, extravagant, expensive joke. Have you seen the TV shows? The cartoons, the way we’re lampooned in the papers? I’m not sure we represent anything except a desperate hold on an irrelevant past.”
But William, have you read this script, mate?
William & Kate: A Modern Day Fairy Tale airs 8:30pm Wednesday on TEN.
25 Responses
Oh Geesus! The Director/Producer/Executive Producer should be hung, drawn and quartered for inlflicting this D-grade acting and story upon the un-suspecting public.. The worst drivel ever written. It has led me to divorce my wife for her insistance on bad taste…
i loved it very funny too lol!!!
i just loved it
Unfair comparison to ‘Cruel Intentions’: that film is vastly superior to this telemovie. ‘Cruel Intentions’ has the advantage of being adapted from a clever and witty work of literature (Les Liaisons Dangereuses). ‘William & Kate’ is adapted from real life and there is the problem: the source material is banal, trite and irrelevant.
Honestly wasn’t the best. But the only thing I got out of it was the actress they used for Kate was so beautiful:)
What did people expect?
It’s a TV romance movie based on the most Over hyped event at the moment….
Totally understand david, i understood what you were trying to say and i hear you! I dont want to come off rude and unappreciative of you and the blog.
Sounds like something from an episode of Dynasty!
Ive seen the ads and that was enough.
Yep. I already caught this and i wouldn’t even rate it 1/2 a star its that bad. I actually can’t believe i watched the whole thing. I kept thinking it will get better it will get better but it just got worse. lol
What the hell is this gossip girl comparison
*Vomit*
@franz chong – Nine channels will not be broadcasting the wedding – or rent a DVD – or read a book.
Haha plum in the mouth
love that expression. I can not wait to cringe whilst watching this haha
this is a joke.and it gets worse every channel on friday is dishing up the royal wedding so go get a pay tv subscription now before then and get it fitted so u don’t have to suffer through it
gossip girl is actually a fun, great show 😉
Gossip Girl is what it is, a perfectly successful US soap / melodrama. Its world revolves around rich American kids in a European-like setting (ie. croquet, debutante balls etc) in New England. I was drawing parallels with this US telemovie trying to pass itself off as British and throwing in a Gossip Girl-style bitch. Gossip Girl is the better of the two.
Gossip Girl is actually a pretty entertaining show!! Stop with the hate
Hey! don’t evaluate the guilty pleasure that is Gossip Girl with this junk.
Ohhhh, I feel your pain.
I saw the promo for this yesterday and that was enough to make me throw up a bit in the back of my mouth,
I love me a good romance, but this looks horribly rushed. I’m lactose intolerant, so I’m not sure I can handle something *this* cheesy. 😀
This week is is going to suck !
How did you manage to award this rubbish 1.5 stars? Surely zero would be more appropriate?
Seeing the ads on TEN you would think this is a proper documentary… either way I’m skipping most of the Royal wedding stuff and might catch the highlights on the news.
Hilarious review – but oh so true!
There have been several of these ‘cheap and nasty’ telemovies made over the years. i remember one about Diana and Fergie from a few years back – that looked shocking too.
It would be best just to watch the real royal wedding than this fake knock-off – off to the dustbin of history this goes!!
I was excited to watch it, but not after this glowing review!! If anything it was mostly to see what Jonathan Patrick Moore (I preferred Wood!) had been up to since All Saints. I didn’t catch East West 101 last week, so it’s likely that I’ll have nothing else to watch.